Over three decades Sandra Gibson’s expertise, teaching and practice in arts and culture have given her a unique understanding of partnership, creativity and collaboration. Gibson’s professional career began with her role as program representative for UCLA Extension’s Department of the Arts, where she developed and managed 200 nationally recognized programs annually. Gibson later became Director, West Coast Operations at American Film Institute, and also served as Director, National Endowment for the Art’s Independent Filmmaker Program and Director, Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies.

Gibson’s work as the executive director of the Long Beach Regional Arts Council in California developed her gifts for working with diverse cultural communities, individual artists and patrons of arts and culture. Gibson directed the city’s first Cultural Masterplan and launched the first Smithsonian Institution Program Affiliation in the US. In 1995 Gibson served on the steering committee that formed Americans for the Arts and was recruited for the position of executive vice president and COO at the organization in 1998. In 2000, she was appointed the fourth president and CEO of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the leading service and advocacy organization for the presenting industry worldwide. While there, Gibson conducted the first nationwide survey of the performing arts presenting field and expanded the association’s reach globally and across industry sectors. In 2005 Gibson was appointed by Secretary Colin Powell and later by Secretary Condoleezza Rice as a Commissioner on the Culture Committee of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and also testified with cellist Yo Yo Ma on immigration reform before the US House of Representatives Government Reform Committee.

Gibson currently serves as the first executive director of the National China Garden Foundation in Washington, D.C. and serves as Chair, Friends of the British Council and a board member and chair, Artistic Committee of the Sphinx Organization, as well as a board member and chair of the Governance Committee for the National Center for Creativity in Aging. An ethnomusicologist and musician with a Master’s Degree in Music from Northwestern University, Gibson believes the arts are critical to personal, community and national well being, essential to an advanced democracy and to global cultural exchanges.